Aaron Johnson emailed over a couple of new paintings that he will have on display in NYC as part of two group shows opening Thursday- Stux GalleryIf Winter Comes Can Spring be Far Behind? & The Lodge GalleryA Human Extension

LOS ANGELES --- Denver based Joseph Martinez does incredible intricate teeeenie tiny paintings on matchbooks. The title of his show that opens tonight at LA's Soze Gallery says it all - "Steady Hands, Blurry Vision"... Not sure about the blurry vision, but Martinez sure has steady hands and must not be a huge coffee drinker (PREVIEW)

All three artists have collaborated in the past and have extensive, multi-disciplinary bodies of work in street art, painting, drawing and installation. The exhibition focuses on each person's individual body of work.

Frequent Fecal Face contributor Henrik Haven is in Penang, Malaysia documenting Ernest Zacharevic's show "Art is Rubbish/Rubbish is Art" which opened on the 17th at Hin Company Bus Depot in Penang, Malaysia (PHOTOS).

The blog also includes images from a satellite show held at the fabolous Eastern & Oriental Hotel, which showcase exclusive oil paintings of Penang, sketches and offset prints.

SAN FRANCISCO --- Gallery 16 in SOMA (501 Third St) here in the city is set to open new works by Jason Jagel with the show entitled "FROM THE SKY, RIVERS LOOK LIKE SNAKES" on Friday, Feb 7th (6-9pm). Here's a lil' taste.

Jason Jägel was born in 1971 in Boston, Massachusetts. He received degrees from California College of Arts and Crafts (BFA 1995) and Stanford University (MFA 2002). A monograph of his work entitled, Seventy-Three Funshine (2008), was created with an accompanying ten-inch vinyl record with music by Madlib and published by Electric Works, San Francisco. Jägel has been featured in numerous solo and group shows since 1995 including those in New York, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Milan, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans and more. Jagel's work appears in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The UCLA Hammer Museum and the Portland Museum of Art, among others. Jason lives with his wife and two daughters in San Francisco.

At the beginning of December 2013 Kenor, Zosen and Mina Hamada from Barcelona went to Miami for paint some murals during Art Basel. We painted at Grove Studios in Coconut Grove ("Coconut Sunrise"). (PHOTOS)

Next days we created 2 big murals close to Wynwood walls: one doing a circles series ("Acid Galaxy") and other one more free-style ("El carnaval de la juventud") . Both murals are in collaboration (left side by Mina Hamada, center by Kenor and right side by Zosen).

Chicago based Luke Pelletier emailed over some images from his newest zine entitled Dead Dirt. Not only a creator of the visual art stuffs, Luke also makes the music forms. Musical melodies in the act of video models which shall be viewed in the below space for your healthy ears and eye holes. #snakebite

I have also included shots of his visit to the local wood carver/sign maker (since a sign above the door of a new opened store is good luck) where he picked up a sign with one of his "childish horses" which is going to be on display at the show (it's Chinese New year here and it will be the year of the horse - again for good luck), a visit to a legendary stamp maker who carved Ernest's signature in marble in the traditional Chinese way which will be added on the hand finished prints that goes along with the show and finally shots from a local Indian store that usually produce ornament for parades etc. but in this case made 2 Lego sculptures in large scale for the show (similar to the ones he made on a mural just recently that caused quite a stir and controversy in the area here). PHOTOS

From Tiffany Bozic: "Check out this lame-ass company who blatantly ripped off the Strigiformes painting, trying to sell it on ugly sweatshirts. I posted an alert on my Tumblr blog about it.

I'm sick of this happening, and I feel like it would help IMMENSELY to get some more exposure out there on the subject to help put an end to this. I can imagine this is happening to a ton of other emerging artists as well, not just me."

Has this happened to you? We've seen other large companies in the past plunder artists' works... Any lawyers out there know the legality of this? Is this a case of cease and desist?

Even though it's a rad sweater, Tiffany Bozic did NOT license her artwork for this.

On our walk home last evening walked past Miss Van's mural on Haight and Steiner. It's a great one even though we miss Mike Giant's mural that had been there for some years... Oh, Mike Giant solo show upcoming Feb 7th at FFDG.

Mrs. Trippe walks on by Miss Van's large scale SF mural on Haight and Stiener

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

SAN FRANCISCO --- The Headlands Center for the Arts is preparing for their largest fundraiser of the year set to go down on June 4th at SOMArts here in the city. Art auction, food, drinks, live music, etc and all for helping to support a great institution up in the Marin Headlands. ~details

ABOUT HEADLANDSHeadlands Center for the Arts provides an unparalleled environment for the creative process and the development of new work and ideas. Through a range of programs for artists and the public, we offer opportunities for reflection, dialogue, and exchange that build understanding and appreciation for the role of art in society.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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